Can Britain Tolerate Christians?

Nondiscrimination laws become a morass of claims and counterclaims.

By

Anne Jolis

March 15, 2012 7:27 p.m. ET

London

Fifteen years ago, hoteliers Peter and Hazelmary Bull made some mocking headlines when reporters noticed their stodgy guest policy: No double rooms for unmarried couples. "You have got to have principles," Mrs. Bull told the Mirror at the time, under the headline "You Couldn't Make It Up."

The Bulls had been turning away unwed mini-breakers from their Cornish guesthouse since 1986, and no one had sued them for it yet. It was, after all, no crime to be the least-cool B&B in England.

That appears to have changed. Last month a British appeals court upheld a £3,600 ($5,800) fine against the Bulls, who in 2008 turned down Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy for a double room despite their being joined in a civil partnership. The British government has recognized such unions since 2005; the Bulls, born-again Christians, do not. Messrs. Hall and Preddy sued on the grounds that their rights had been violated under the U.K.'s 2007 Equality Act, which bars sexual-orientation discrimination in the provision of services.

The Bulls hope to appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court and, if that fails, to the European Court of Human Rights. British law currently exempts some religious institutions from some nondiscrimination laws, but commercial guesthouses don't count. While the Bulls are perfectly entitled to be Christian in private, their business is a "service and public function" under British law because they offer their services to the "public."

Mike Judge of the Newcastle-based Christian Institute, which has funded the Bulls' legal battle, says the couple is seeking a new exemption providing "reasonable accommodation or expansion" for enterprises such as their own. "The equality law has been framed such that, by giving an exemption to a religious organization, it suggests you can exercise religious liberty only within religious organizations," says Mr. Judge.

That's true enough, though Britain's equality and nondiscrimination rules already have more loopholes than a coherent principle can bear. A case in point involves British Airways, a private business that has had better luck enforcing its standards under Britain's patchwork of rights, responsibilities and opt-outs.

In a dispute now headed to the European Court of Human Rights, the British government has backed British Airways in having enforced a long-standing dress code that kept front-office employees from wearing visible religious symbols. Check-in attendant Nadia Eweida refused to submit to the code in 2006, insisting on visibly wearing her crucifix and declining a job for the same pay away from customers. She was subsequently placed on unpaid leave for six months until BA relaxed its policy in 2007.

British courts rejected Ms. Eweida's demand that BA repay her lost wages, and she is now arguing before the European court in Strasbourg that the U.K. government failed to protect her right, recognized both by Britain and the European Union, to religious nondiscrimination in the workplace. Here the government's argument rests on its judgment of what Christianity does and does not demand of its adherents, and it concludes that wearing symbols such as crucifixes doesn't constitute the "practice" of a religion, but merely "behavior or expression that is motivated or inspired by religion or belief," which is not always protected.

Less tortured is the government's secondary point, which is that BA is a private company and the government has "no positive obligations to ensure that a private employer permitted Ms. Eweida to wear a visible cross." The government's filing says that Ms. Eweida's rights, under both British and European protections, were satisfied because she was "free to resign and seek employment elsewhere."

But just as no one forces crucifix-wearing Christians to work for secular-sensitive airlines, nothing compels same-sex couples to seek accommodations at Christian-run properties. In the Bulls' case, however, the government's position comes down to the fact that no one forces Christians to open businesses.

In this morass of rights claims and counterclaims, British Christians may be forgiven for seeing a larger assault on their values and traditions. Yet lost in the country's increasingly awkward debates over religious versus sexual freedoms, and the competing sensibilities of this or that protected group, is an even more puzzling discrepancy over when any private business is allowed to set potentially discriminatory standards. So far the U.K. has respected some such rights in relation to a business's employees, but not its customers.

Even that latitude may soon narrow, as Prime Minister David Cameron's government attempts damage control among its Christian supporters over Ms. Eweida's case. A Downing Street spokesman this week suggested that if the European court finds against Ms. Eweida, the government may look into new protections for religious workers against private standards such as dress codes.

That might satisfy devout Britons for a while, as would a new carve-out for religious business owners such as the Bulls—at least until the next time anyone's convictions, mores, practices or habits conflict with anyone else's in the country. Meanwhile, these small victories will only further muddle companies' freedoms to dispose of their resources as they see fit—regardless of faith, sexual orientation, or ever-changing estimations of political expedience.

Miss Jolis is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.

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